by Aaron at Watch Ponder "Many (or all) consumers complain in watch forums that watches are overpriced. Even watch enthusiasts complain that prices are higher than ever. If watch sales are down for the past 2 years, why don’t the watch companies simply lower their prices? Don’t the laws of supply and demand suggest that when sales are down, prices will fall as well? Here is why watch prices are unlikely to decrease anytime soon."

I honestly think, since the start of the year, that I've never seen prices higher across the board, and that includes the pre-owned market. The only saving grace is that a few of the big companies released new watches at prices that seemed reasonable. Otherwise, most of the good stuff went up.

One of the better recent articles, racer. Pretty reasoned points and a logical conclusion. Sure beats glorified word processors like TV Antenna Adams, whose tongue is so far up the big brands' butts that he can probably refinish his deck without buying Thompson's WaterSeal.

Second, I think some middle-brand companies will stop producing in Switzerland to reduce costs. This will be contrary to the new Swissness law requiring 60% of a watch be made in Switzerland, but some companies will likely stop caring if the label says Swiss Made if it’s a matter of survival.

WRONG.

The author had a good thing going up to this point, but here he goes off the rails, like so many business-writer-types when they start talking about things that don't fit into the MBA-paradigm--and I really, really had using the term "paradigm".

When you're talking about Swiss made watches, the makers of these watches know that there's only one place on earth to make watches, and that's Switzerland. Every place else can, as jason_recliner would say, suck their motherfucking dicks. The same goes for watch buyers; now, you could say that fine watches are made in Japan, and you'd be right. The same goes for Germany, parts of the UK, France and Italy, and even here in the US. Indeed, there are impressive watches coming out of China. But, for the average buyer--and most importantly, the average luxury watch buyer, there's only Swiss.

Luxury (which is where the mid-tiered makers are, just check the prices) is the thing that doesn't fit the MBA-paradigm. To MBAs (like, say, Charles Ninetoes) everything is quantifiable. Everything is logic, everything fits on a balance sheet. MBAs are like bush league Robert McNamaras fighting the Vietnam war--if we drop X amounts of napalm, and burn up Y amount of babies, then by the time of Z we'll win the war. But luxury is unquantifiable--it doesn't fit into an algorithm. Luxury is fucking goofy. It makes no sense. But, it's what buyers are after, and it's what the makers are chasing.

The mid-tier makers aren't ever going to leave Switzerland. They'll go out of business first.

Johannes! My knees are trembling from banging her so hard with my rod!